Mr. Meeson's Will eBook

Presently the night set in once more, and, worn out
with all that she had gone through, Augusta said her
prayers and went to sleep with little Dick locked
fast in her arms.

Some hours afterwards she was awakened by loud and
uproarious shouts, made up of snatches of drunken
songs and that peculiar class of English that hovers
ever round the lips of the British Tar. Evidently
Bill and Johnnie were raging drunk, and in this condition
were taking the midnight air.

The shouting and swearing went reeling away towards
the water’s edge, and then, all of a sudden,
they culminated in a fearful yell—­after
which came silence.

What could it mean? wondered Augusta and whilst she
was still wondering dropped off to sleep again.

CHAPTER XI.

RESCUED.

Augusta woke up just as the dawn was stealing across
the sodden sky. It was the smarting of her shoulders
that woke her. She rose, leaving Dick yet asleep,
and, remembering the turmoil of the night, hurried
to the other hut. It was empty.

She turned and looked about her. About fifteen
paces from where she was lay the shell that the two
drunkards had used as a cup. Going forward, she
picked it up. It still smelt disgustingly of spirits.
Evidently the two men had dropped it in the course
of their midnight walk, or rather roll. Where
had they gone to?

Straight in front of her a rocky promontory ran out
fifty paces or more into the waters of the fjord-like
bay. She walked along it aimlessly till presently
she perceived one of the sailor’s hats lying
on the ground, or, rather, floating in a pool of water.
Clearly they had gone this way. On she went to
the point of the little headland, sheer over the water.
There was nothing to be seen, not a single vestige
of Bill and Johnnie. Aimlessly enough she leant
forward and stared over the rocky wall, and down into
the clear water, and then started back with a little
cry.

No wonder that she started, for there on the sand,
beneath a fathom and a half of quiet water, lay the
bodies of the two ill-fated men. They were locked
in each other’s arms, and lay as though they
were asleep upon that ocean bed. How they came
to their end she never knew. Perhaps they quarrelled
in their drunken anger and fell over the little cliff;
or perhaps they stumbled and fell not knowing whither
they were going. Who can say? At any rate,
there they were, and there they remained, till the
outgoing tide floated them off to join the great army
of their companions who had gone down with the Kangaroo.
And so Augusta was left alone.

With a heavy heart she returned to the hut, pressed
down by the weight of solitude, and the sense that
in the midst of so much death she could not hope to
escape. There was no human creature left alive
in that vast lonely land, except the child and herself,
and so far as she could see their fate would soon
be as the fate of the others. When she got back
to the hut, Dick was awake and was crying for her.